One can ' t stress enough on the importance of backups and when it comes to tinkering with your Android phone, a backup of Y Our system, recovery and boot partitions can save your a lot of hassle so you might otherwise has to go through if you m ESS things up and need those stock images. In the This guide, we'll tell the these backups using a free tool called romdump.
Although you can find these backups on the Internet, those has been taken by other users and you never know if they has been modified to contain malicious code or not. Secondly, you can ' t is too sure if they would work with the exact specifications of your phone or not, as even for the SAM e phone model, there can be differences depending on the phone's regions, intended carriers and other similar factors, and Flashing a wrong boot, system or recovery image to your phone can most likely brick it. Therefore, it's always a great idea-to-take backup images of these partitions of your device yourself before you attempt To modify them, so this they can be recovered later if anything goes wrong.
Romdump is a free tool, that lets your do just. It's quite easy-to-use-anyone who's comfortable with typing a few commands, and effectively creates backup images of Your Android phone ' s boot, recovery and system partitions. IT requires your phone to being rooted first and you'll either need ADB installed on your computer or a terminal applicatio n Installed on your Android device.
Now the We have had a overview, let's proceed to actually getting things done.
Before you proceed:
- Make sure this your device is rooted. If it isn ' t, do a quick search on our site for "root phone_name" without the quotes, replacing ' Phone_name ' with the name of your device. You'll find a easy-to-follow guide on rooting your phone.
- In case of you is using the ADB method, make sure your adb installed on your computer. If it isn ' t, refer-to-our-guide-on-what-is-ADB and how-to set it-on your computer.
- On the other hand, if you be going to use a terminal application, download and install Android terminal Emulator which is Available for free on the Android market.
Now proceed according to the method so you chose.
ADB Method:
- Download Romdump from the link given below, extract the file named ' Install ' from the downloaded zip archive to your Compu ter and copy it to the ' Tools ' folder of your Android SDK installation folder.
- Connect your phone to your computer via USB and make sure USB debugging mode are enabled in Settings >> applications >> development.
- Open a command Prompt window and enter the following commands:
ADB push install/data/local/04755 /data/local//data/local/install
- You might see some output of the above command. Wait until it finishes.
- Enable and then disable Wi-Fi on your Android phone. If It is already enabled, disable, enable and then disable it again.
- Type This command with the Command Prompt window on your computer:
ADB Shell Romdump
- Wait patiently for the process to finish and you ' re-done. You could now exit the command prompt.
Terminal Method:
- Download Romdump from the link given below, extract the file named ' Install ' from the downloaded zip archive to your Compu ter and copy it to the root of your phone ' s storage card.
- Launch Android Terminal Emulator (or any other Terminal apps of your choice) on your Android phone and enter these commands :
/sdcard/install >/data/local/04755 /data/local/Install/data/local/install
- You'll see some output of the above command. Wait till the output finishes.
- After the appeared, enable and then disable Wi-Fi on your phone. If It is already enabled, disable, enable and then disable it again.
- Type This command in Terminal Emulator:
/system/bin/romdump
- Wait patiently till the process finishes and you ' re-done. You could now exit Terminal Emulator.
If you had completed the above steps for any of the methods successfully, you'll find a folder named ' Romdump ' on t He root of your SD card
That's contains a subfolder by the name of the your device model. This folder would contain the boot, system and recovery partition images.
Alternative Method If The Above Does not work:
If This method does isn't work for both and all of need to backup are your recovery and boot images, you can simply does so as Follows.
Note:do not attempt to backup the system partition using this method as the system image it produces the
Won't is a valid system image to being used later to restore your system partition. Use it only for the recovery and boot partition images.
- If you is using ADB, connect your device to your computer via USB, launch a command prompt windows on your computer and EN ter the following command:
ADB shell
If you is using Terminal Emulator instead, just launch it on your Android phone and enter the following command
and agree to grant any permissions your ' re prompted for:
Su
The remaining process would be being the same for both ADB and Terminal Emulator.
- Enter the following command:
Cat PROC/MTD
/proc/mtd: No such file or directory
It doesn‘t on my Vibrant either, though I can get somewhat similar info via
cat /proc/partitions
- You'll get an output of similar to this. Note that your result could differ from this one and you must proceed according to the output so you get, rather than the Example.
dev:size erasesize namemtd0:000a000000020000 "Misc"MTD1:00480000 00020000 "Recovery"MTD2:00300000 00020000 "Boot"mtd3:0fa0000000020000 "system"MTD4:02800000 00020000 "Cache"mtd5:093a000000020000 "UserData"
- To dump the recovery image to your SD card, make note of the first word of the the line which says ' recovery ' in the end. It is the ' mtd1 ' in case of the This example and May was another entry for you. Now use this command, replacing ' mtd1 ' with the term that is applies in your case, if different:
if=/dev/mtd/mtd1 of=/sdcard/recovery.img bs=4096
- Similarly, to-dump the boot image to your SD card, make note of the first word of the line which says ' boot ' in the end, W Hich is ' mtd2 ' in our case but may differ for you. Use this command now, replacing ' mtd2 ' with the term that's is applicable in your case, if different:
if=/dev/mtd/mtd2 of=/sdcard/boot.img bs=4096
That's it–you now has recovery.img and Boot.img backed up on the root of the your SD card.
How to Backup Your Android Phone ' s Boot, Recovery and System Partition Images--Romdump